Ultima Underworld 1+2, Syndicate Plus, and Syndicate Wars are free via GOG for a limited time; after being delisted by EA and returned after outcry.
GOG had previously announced on June 24th that the games would all be delisted by June 28th. This was “on publisher’s request;” which falls to Electronic Arts (EA).
However, fan outcry lead to the games returning on August 6th. What’s more, the games would be entirely free until September 3rd. “It seems that twenty years on there’s still plenty of love for these titles,” EA stated, “so we’re pleased to confirm that effective immediately they’ll be available again on GOG, and we’ll be keeping them in the store for the foreseeable future.”
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Chris Bruzzo (EA’s Executive Vice President for Marketing, Commercial, and Positive Play) explained how the delisting happened in the first place.
“When making decisions that affect players we take the time to review exactly what the potential impacts are and whether they serve the players best interests. When we delisted Syndicate and Ultima Underworld we missed that step and so didn’t fully consider the players perspective.” The fact that EA is happy to offer the games for free for a month would suggest they expect minimal impact on their profits.
“From the level of interest players showed in delisting these games, it was clear that people still wanted them to be available, so we did two things,” Bruzzo explained. “The first was to ensure that going forward we have a process in place that considers the player perspective in listing decisions. The second was to relist the titles and make them available to as many people as possible with a month-long promotion.”
“We saw so much love for these titles, more than twenty years after they originally launched we realised that we had to make them available again.”
At this time of writing; Ultima Underworld 1+2, Syndicate Plus, and Syndicate Wars are all free via GOG.
